There are a number of concerns amongElder Scrollsfans about the future of the franchise that, thankfully, fans of fellow Bethesda franchiseFalloutlikely won’t need to worry about. Both properties are on similar ground right now, with a number of main series entries that span from the ’90s until the early-to-mid 2010s. Both have also been lacking any new main series entries for some time, with nearly 8 years passing sinceFallout 4and 12 sinceThe Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.
Recently, an avid fan ofElder Scrollscame to a grim realizationabout the future of the franchise given its location-based entries and the amount of time it takes to produce new entries. In some ways, this could definitely equally apply to fans ofFallout, especially consideringElder Scrollsfans at least have news about the sixth game whileFallout 5news remains essentially non-existent. The post-apocalyptic series does avoid one of the concerns about the fantasy franchise, though: there is no shortage of locales to explore.
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No Shortage of Locations
Starting withElder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, every game in that series has focused on a specific province within the continent of Tamriel. The concern is, given the currentturnover time betweenSkyrimand the next additionto the franchise, that many fans won’t live to see every province in Tamriel get its own game. This is a concern that could technically also apply toFallout, considering basically the entire world has become a wasteland and it would take a long time to cover all of that, much less every major city in the US. It’s not really somethingFalloutfans are looking for, though, in the same way thatElder Scrollsdiehards would very much like to see Black Marsh and Valenwood explored.
TheFalloutseries has thus far explored Washington DC, Boston, and Las Vegas along with parts of West Virginia and California. Even if the franchise were to set a goal of making a game in every US state, the vast majority of those still remain unexplored. This gives the developers an incredible amount of variety when getting to choosethe location for every newFalloutgame, and there’s not really any pressure from the fans to make sure each state is explored. 45 moreFalloutgames just doesn’t feel particularly realistic, even if it may be a dream for some. The franchise also doesn’t necessarily need to limit itself to the US. It would definitely be interesting to see wastelands in countries like Australia or South Africa as well.
The Time Between Releases
The time to make bothFalloutandElder Scrollsgames is undoubtedly getting longer.Fallout 5is currently waiting in line behindElder Scrolls 6, which still doesn’t have a release date in sight and likely won’t for some time. Currently, the longest wait between two main-series entries is the 10 years betweenFallout 2andFallout 3, which was largely due to the financial troubles of the series' original publisher Interplay. SinceFallout 5won’t even start untilElder Scrolls 6is done, and it likely won’t be complete until 2025 at the earliest, it seems like there won’t be more vaults explored until well past that 10-year mark.
So, whileFalloutfans don’t have the location concerns ofElder Scrollsfans, the wait time concerns run between both and are far more of an issue. Outsourcing the nextFallouttitle could be a smart move for Bethesda, consideringthe controversial natures ofFallout 76and, to a lesser extent,Fallout 4.Compare that with the success of Obsidian’sFallout: New Vegasand it becomes questionable why Bethesda is making fans wait so long for the nextFalloutgame at all when other options are out there. Regardless, at least players will not have to worry about specific locations never being explored in their lifetime.
